Help me understand how Microsoft might respond to Linux!

by Steve Richards ·
Published October 6, 2004
· Updated March 29, 2014

I have been asking myself the following question:

If Linux begins to capture significant desktop market share what options are open to Microsoft?

In this article I have listed my initial ideas, and it would be great to get some feedback on the technical feasibility (some of them maybe plain crazy) and political acceptability of the options within Microsoft. It might also be interesting to get feedback on how the Open Source and business communities might respond.

Here is my headline list, with each option described in more detail later:

Extend SFU to create a LSB 2 compliant sub system for Windows.I don’t know enough about LSB 2 to know how practical it would be to achieve this, but my guess is that since LSB 2 leans heavily on POSIX and SFU is a POSIX sub system it should be possible.

Release SFU as Open Source, possibly merging it with Cygwin and Cygwin-X and sponsor/support the Open Source community in achieving option 2

I'm retired from work as a business and IT strategist. now I'm travelling, hiking, cycling, swimming, reading, gardening, learning, writing this blog and generally enjoying good times with friends and family